India. Every year, 40,000 people move to the middle of the desert called Little Ran of Kutch for eight months. There, before the seasonal rains come, they extract salt from the earth for resale. Among them is Sanabhai, who is helped by his wife and children.

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There is no narration, no explanations, just the quiet actions of a family in the middle of no man’s land. Farida Pacha has chosen to use her camera at a comfortable distance, observing the people who come to this vast Indian desert every year to make ends met. This classic approach is at first frustrating in its lack of information of how the salt is extracted: the various steps remain opaque, a fact rarely helped along by brief conversations about the difficult conditions. My Name is Salt offers a look at an unusual activity that is completely contingent on nature and the elements. Sometimes the images of this difficult and seemingly ineffectual task offer a poetic moment, but in the end Farida Pacha’s film is seriously lacking in strength and daring.